What started as a blog looking at Booker Prize Shortlisted novels since 1969, has morphed into a search for the best writing from the whole planet. Books listed for Awards of various descriptions a forte but not a prerequisite.

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Sunday, 16 June 2013

The city’s mood was a
blend of fear and titillation. There was going to be an almighty collision and
a small world shudders when giants collide.

This novel’s so chunky you could carve it, y’check me?
Imagine you could blend James Kelman’s “How late it was how late” with a hint
of Anthony Burgess’ “A Clockwork Orange”, a smidge of Nick Cave’s “And The Ass
Saw The Angel”, a touch of Jon McGregor’s “Even The Dogs” and a whole bunch of
Tom Waits. Set it in a dystopian future, use local (and unknown or invented)
slang and have a bunch of anti-heroes about to enter a feud. That would only
give you part of the concept.

“City of Bohane” is set in 2052 (you only learn that very
late in the novel and the time this novel is set, was to me quite irrelevant) and
centres on the ‘bino (tall white character Logan Hartnett who resembles an albino) who controls the degraded area. His flunkies consist of late teenage
boys Wolfie Stanners and Fucker Burke and a cat suit dressed lithe Asian girl Jenni
Ching. They frequent places such as the Ho Pee Ching Oh-Kay Koffee Shoppe
speaking in slang and discussing the return of Gant to the area, Gant’s been
gone for twenty-five years, was considered a future leader along with the ‘bino
and was sweet on the ‘bino’s now wife Macu. Through this murky underworld runs
the river of Bohane, black and bleak, along with bogs, the people from all
parts of the city, the weather:

The Rises is a bleak, forlorn
place, and violently windy. Too little has been said, actually, about living in
windy places. When a wind blows in such ferocious gusts as the Big Nothin’
hardwind, and when it blows forty-nine weeks out of the year, the effect is not
physical only but…philosophical. It is difficult to keep a firm hold on one’s
consciousness in such a wind. The mind is walloped from its train of thought by
the constant assaults of wind. The result is a skittish, temperamental people
with a tendency towards odd turns of logic. Such were (and are) the people of
the Northside Rises.

We also have gangs of sand-pikeys who keep kidnapped women
in cages for “entertainment”, an angina effected editor of the local newspaper
who has a thing for hairbrushes, the ‘bino’s mother Girly who lives on Jamieson’s
and tranquilizers and spends her days watching movies from the 1950’s but still
controlling the whole city, mysterious owners of numerous dodgy businesses and
of course gang or clan leaders and more. This is a city on the edge, one that
is ready to explode but as the opening sentence says: “Whatever’s wrong with us
is coming in off that river”.

Daintily with forefinger and
thumb he raised the ankle cuff of his trouser leg and dipped a Croat boot into
the water to wash it clean.

Saw a red vibrancy mingle with
the tarry brown of the bog water and so quickly disappear in the great mass of
the river.

As you can imagine this novel is peppered with extreme
violence and language, but amazingly it has humour, tenderness, lost love,
grieving and humility. This is not an easy read, by any stretch of the
imagination, and I did find myself re-reading numerous sentences or conversations,
literally translating them into my own language as at times the slang and
inflections are almost undecipherable. But I can guarantee the effort is worth
it, Kevin Barry has created a dark world that seems beyond redemption, a place
where human life is not at all valued, power and control are the measure of
worth – along with your clothes:

Wolfie wore:

A neatly cut Crombie of
confederate grey above green tweed peg pants, straight-legged, a starched white
shirt, collar open to show a harlequin-patterned cravat, and a pair of
tan-coloured arsekickers on the hooves that’d been imported from far Zagreb
(them boys knew how to make a boot, was the Fancy’s reckon; if the Long Fella
wasn’t walkin’ Portuguese, he was walkin’ Croat).

Of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award shortlisted novels I have
completed this was the standout for me, a change of pace from the raft of
historical fiction that has been making the shortlists of late – a novel that
will challenge and enthral you, another great work to come out of Ireland!!!

I've just finished City of Bohane, and was very impressed by it. There's an inventiveness to the language that makes some of the passages read like poetry. His descriptions of the landscapes outside the city, for example, suggest he's been reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy. Here's one that stands out: 'Smaller tracks lead from it [the Boreen] into the hills and onto the bog and down briary laneways peoples by haggard souls in damp cottages that sag with damp, and loss, and sadness. The rain fell hard as the boys grimly walked, and rain was no surprise to the place. A low bank of cloud had moved in from the Atlantic and broke up when it hit the foothills of the Nothin' massif. The bog was livened and opened its maw hungrily for the rain..' The dialogue is also strong, and very recognisably Irish despite the presence of the invented slang terms, and it flows along quite nicely. Definitely a very fine debut and I get the impression that, once he's got another two or three novels under his belt, Barry will be a master. Next up for me: The Testament of Mary, by Colm Toibin, from the Booker longlist.

Thank you so much for your feedback Andrew - great to see a true literary aficionado logging in and commenting. Get to Dublinesque before The Testament of Mary - I'm sure it's more your style. (But then again you'll knock over Toibin's novel in one sitting).